mostly short queer fiction from a tall queer guy

Lily

I know I already did my two wee posts about books I’ve read this year that I think would make great gifts, but the year isn’t done, I just finished Lily, and oh my gosh you need to get this into the hands of readers.

Especially readers who love, say, Neil Gaiman.

You want this. You want this so much.

Yep, that’s what I said. It’s totally that good, and people who love Neil Gaiman can be right sods to buy for because they snap his stuff up as soon as it’s out there. I remember this from the bookstore days, and I remember the frustration of having to explain to people that no, there wasn’t a new Neil Gaiman that had just come out that their daughter/wife/son/husband/friend/whoever wouldn’t know about. Most of the time, I’d try to find things that were almost as good to suggest, and I felt good about that.

If I was still working at the bookstore full-time, I would be handing this to each and every one of them.

The Blurb:

Lily is a girl who discovers she has the ability to see how others will die simply by touching them. Only she doesn’t want this gift, and takes extreme measure to protect herself from it. When her mother—because every fairy tale has to have a wicked (step)mother—sells Lily’s services to an evangelical preacher and his wildly popular travelling tent revival, Lily is torn away from the idyllic place she’s always known as home and thrust into a world of greed and manipulation that threatens to destroy her unless she can find a way back…if she survives the quest the old witch Baba Yaga has given her…or the attention of the tent revivalist who promises to save her soul. Lily features the eerie artwork of Staven Andersen and the moving words of award-winning author Michael Thomas Ford.

A word on this artwork? Ohmigosh. So dark and pretty all at once. I listened to this book on audio, and then went back and physically read it again after, just so I could touch the pretty hardcover.

And trust me, you want the pretty hardcover.

I’ll probably go into a more thorough review later on, once I gather all my thoughts, but I wanted to come forward right now and tell all of you wondering what to get that reader in your life that I have your answer, right here.

Get Lily, from Lethe Press (direct from the publisher), or, check your local brick-and-mortar through indiebound.org, or of course you can always look at the usual e-tailer suspects.